This invention relates to protective absorbent liners for undergarments and in particular, the thin absorbent liners intended to fit within the crotch portion of an undergarment and protect the garment from body exudates. Such products are designed to provide such protection between menstrual periods as well as during light flow days and may also be worn during a menstrual period in conjunction with internal sanitary protection products such as catamenial tampons.
Such thin products are now on the market and have met with some commercial success. In an attempt to make the products aesthetically as well as functionally appealing, manufacturers have embossed or otherwise imposed patterns of depressed areas onto the surfaces of the liners, in such patterns as flowers, lines, spots, and the like. Unfortunately, manufacturers have encountered certain problems in attempting to produce thin embossed products manufactured at the high speeds required to commercially provide an inexpensive disposable product such as those being considered herein. To be aesthetically effective, such embossing must be relatively deep; i.e., the depressed areas must be permanently depressed to a degree which represents a major portion of the thickness of the product. Shallow embossing is not visually effective. Unfortunately, the effect of such extreme compression is to produce a rather dense, harsh, inflexible material. While such characteristics are not particularly detrimental when existing on the central portion of the body facing side of a liner, they are a source of discomfort and so undesirable at portions where they are likely to cause chaffing as, for example, at the longitudinal edges of the product i.e., where the product may chafe the thighs of the wearer.
The imperative to manufacture these products at high speed does not allow for careful registration of the embossed pattern on only those areas where they are not detrimental to comfort. Accordingly, heretofore, the choice has been to either emboss the entire product, including the longitudinal edges, with the same depth of depressed areas thereby producing a product which manifests itself in user discomfort or to reduce the depth of the depressions on the entire product thereby rendering the product less visually appealing.